Illyrian

[Zipporah Schumaker]

The [Illyrians] are a group of people which inhabited the northwestern part of the [Balkan] Peninsula, from the 10th century bce onward before Slavs invaded the Balkan Peninsula, and dispersed Illyrians south of the land to the highlands of Kosovo and Albania, they are one of the oldest Indo-European people.
[Albanian people] are in large part descendants of the ancient Illyrians, who, like other Balkan peoples, were subdivided into tribes and clans.
Illyrians were not Slavs, they had their own individual language similar to the Albanian dialect.